The Maritime Heritage Project with News of Captains, Ships and Passengers in 1800s San Francisco

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California , Oregon, Mexican Steamship Co
Ben Holladay took over the Pacific Mail Steamship Company coastal trade in 1861 when Pacific Mail decided to concentrate on its trans-Pacific service. While Holladay is best known for starting the Concord Stagecoach to the West, duing the 1860s Holladay established headquarters in an office at the corner of California and Liedesdorff streets in San Francisco to run his California, Oregon & Mexico Steamship Company.

California Steam Navigation Company
The Company initially focused its operations to bay and river runs in the San Francisco area. In 1858, as the result of the Fraser River Gold Rush in British Columbia, the company entered the coastal service with runs to ports north of San Francisco. Their initial ships included the Pacific and Brother Jonathan. By 1865, California Steam had become known for its disregard of human life whre profits were involved, but it was doing a handsome business between San Francisco, Victoria and Puget Sound. Freight piled up on the San Francisco docks faster than the line's coastwide steamers could haul it north. The aging Brother Jonathan was crammed with freight until her holds bulged . . . then more was piled on deck. Captain Samuel De Wolfe informed the company's agent that the steamer was being dangerously overloaded; the agent responded that if he was too timid to take the Brother Jonathan to sea, there were a dozen jobless captains who would do so. Two days later enroute to Portland from San Francisco, during a heavy gale the Brother Jonathan struck St. George Reef (near Crescent City) and sunk, taking at least 166 persons with her to the bottom.

The Brother Jonathan's sister ship, the Pacific, lasted until 1875. When she went, the toll was even more shocking.
On November 4, at ten at night, with 230 passengers, the Pacific was heading from Victoria to San Francisco when she rammed the square-rigged ship Orpheus. The blow was not heavy, but the old Pacific fell apart at the seams and sank in minutes. The Orpheus' was somewhat damaged, did her crew not realize the condition of the Pacific. Only two survivors were picked up from the wreck of the Pacific, and one of the two died from shock and exposure.

P.B. Cornwall
In 1877, Pacific Mail Steamship Company sold the wooden side-wheeler Great Republic to P.B. Cornwall. The Great Republic, built on Long Island in 1866, was a huge ship for her type (378 feet long, registered at 3,882 tons, constructed of copper-fastened white oak), she was going out of style. P.B. Cornwell, a California pioneer, brought her at a bargain price. Cornwell doesn't seem to have had a formal shipping line and he initially planning on using the Great Republic, but not actually operating her. However, the Pacific Coast and Oregon Steamship companies balked, so Cornwall started up the Great Republic's steam boilers and set up low San Francisco-Portland fares ($7 first class; $2 steerage) and freight rates ($1.50/ton). When the established lines countered by lowering their rates, Cornwell took his even lower and he actually made money because it turned out that coastal travel was even cheaper than boarding room rates. Cornwall's enterprise terminated on mid-April of 1879 when the Great Republic attempted to take the ship over the Columbia Bar at night rather than wait for dawn. The Great Republic didn't clear; she straddled the bar. All 500 cabin and 346 steerage passengers were safely received in Astoria, but the combination of high tides and a series of spring storms tore her to pieces.

The Dollar Steamship Company
Robert Dollar was born in 1844 in Falkirk, Scotland. He moved to Canada in 1857. It is also reported that by the time he was 11 he was a shore boy in a lumber camp where he endured many hardships. Perhaps this was back in Scotland. In 1893 Dollar purchased a sawmill on the Pacific coast of the United States, and his lumber business grew. He had a son, Stanley Dollar who left school at 13 and worked in his father's lumber office.

In 1893 or 1895 he acquired his first vessel, a single steam schooner called Newsboy from the recently bankrupt Navarro Mill, to move his lumber from the Pacific northwest to markets down the coast and in the process they established the Dollar Steamship Company. The new company had a fleet of schooners, presumably moving lumber from the owners' interests to the markets. In 1902, Dollar Steamship Company moved into international shipping running a chartered voyage to Yokohama and the Philippines.

In 1906-7 , Dollar purchased a property at San Rafael, California which he renamed Falkirk. He lived here for the rest of his life and today the house is the Falkirk Muesum. In 1923 he purchased seven ex World War 1 "502 President type" liners from the US Shipping Board. In March 1925 Dollar took over an additional eight "535 President type" liners from the Shipping Board but managed by Pacific Mail Steamship Company in Trans Pacific work. The cost was $5,625,000. Even though this bid was a million dollars lower than Pacific Mail's bid, it was 100% cash whereas the latter's was cash and stock. It was decided that the Pacific Mail bid did not meet the terms of the tender and thus, Dollar Steamship Company gained itself $30 million worth of ships and was now able to start a westbound around the world service. The ships continued to be used on the Trans Pacific service. As would be expected, this hit the Pacific Mail Steamship Co. bad and in 1925 it was taken over by Dollar. In addition, the Admiral Oriental Line went bust and it was also now part of the Dollar Steamship Company. The Dollar Steamship Co. was now one of the most profitable shipping companies in the world but the approaching depression was to be affected. The name of the company changed in 1929 to Dollar Steamship Line Inc. Ltd.

Occidental and Oriental Steamship Company
Formed in 1874 by the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad to operate trans-Pacific passenger services in competition with Pacific Mail. Although based in San Francisco, their ships were all chartered, mostly from the White Star Line and flew the Red Ensign. By the early 1900s, intense competition particularly from Japanese owners caused trade to decrease and the company's last voyage took place in 1905 and the company wound up.

Pacific Mail Steamship Co.
Founded in 1848 by William Aspinwall of the firm of Howland and Aspinwall to execute a contract to carry mail from the Isthmus of Panama to the newly-annexed territory of California. Fortuitously for Aspinwall and his fellow investors, Pacific Mail was accidentally but ideally positioned to cash in on the Gold Rush of 1849.

As a result of this and the high quality of its service, the company became both an important part of the history of the American West as well as one of the most profitable enterprises of its era, with an annual return on investment that ran as high as 30%. Within five years of its inception, the company was running 18 steamers and it peaked at 23 in 1869, the year that the transcontinental railroad neared completion.

In 1861, Pacific Mail Steamship Company began concentrating on its trans-Pacific service. It sold it's northern line to the California, Oregon and Mexican Steamship Company.

For a time, the line survived on subsidized mail contracts to Australia and New Zealand, but when it lost those it was soon forced to accept a takeover by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1893.

In 1912, Congress banned ships owned by railroads from using the Panama Canal, so Southern Pacific sold PMSS to the Grace Line, which operated it as a subsidiary under its traditional house flag from 1916-25. It was then taken over by Robert Dollar & Co., which merged PMSS into its own operation, although it, too, continued to use the old name and flag on occasion.

With the government bail-out of the Dollar Line in 1938, ownership passed to American President Lines, but by this time PMSS essentially existed only on paper. It was formally closed down in 1949 after just over a century of existence.

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